This Week in Sponsorship – Football Crazy! Week 80

Italian football league has allocated a new location for sponsors

Serie A is at the top of the Italian football league system, with clubs such as Roma, Inter Milan, and current leader Juventus. The Italian football federation has now given permission for clubs to allowing for sponsorships to be displayed on the shirt sleeves.

This came in response to certain, unnamed, clubs requesting for the new location but it is yet unknown when this when comes into play.

The restrictions applied are for the advertising space to be a 100cm2 space of the left sleeve. This on top of the 350cm2 of space on the front of the shirt to no more than two brands, and up to 200cm2 of advertising space on the back of the shirt to one brand, underneath the number.

Serie A are not the only club allowed sponsorship on the sleeve. The French Ligue 1, the Spanish La Liga, the German Bundesli, a and the English Premier League also allow for such advertising.

Bayern Munich have to decide - Audi or BMW?

Bayern Munich is the number ranked football in Germany, with 68 trophies to their name and currently top of the league. That means it’s very understandable that sponsors are fighting over a spot on their shirts. Their current sponsors include Bavarian-based Adidas and Allianz, and Ingolstadt based Audi.

Audi’s contract doesn’t run out until 2025 and includes giving €30 million to the club each year and being an 8.33% shareholder, having paid €90 million in 2011. However, as Audi is owned by Volkswagen, Bayern Munich are worried about their reputation. A bit of background – the Volkswagen emissions scandal began in September 2015 when the EPA issued a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act to them. Volkswagen had cheated on their emissions test to meet with the US standards when in reality their vehicles gave off 40 times more NOx.

Understandable this isn’t a good look for Bayern Munich. So, when BMW came to them asking to buy out Audi, they were very tempted. But it’s not that simple. It is currently unknown how much BMW is proposing to offer the club, however, they are willing to buy Audi’s shares which they would need to pay over €100 million for!

It makes sense for BMW to be Bayern Munich’s new sponsor, but with a contract in place, it’s not an easy switch. Audi are very keen on keeping their deal, even offering to up their monthly payments to €60 million. With such a decision to make, and the board being split – with Uli Hoeness on BMWs side and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge with Audi – Bayern Munich have a very tough choice to make. Plus a lot of money at stake.

Paris Saint-Germain are becoming the trendiest football team around

Nike are at it again making big headlines. This time, not with their Just Do It campaign, but with the Jordans brand. Nike and Michael Jordan have sponsored Paris Saint-Germain football team to create the most wanted kit around.

The Nike Jordans brand has long been linked with basketball, for obvious reason, but is clearly now trying to break into other sporting markets. With France having won the world cup and with Paris already being big fans of the brand, this sponsorship makes a lot of sense.

But Nike didn’t just jump into this. In 2016 they opened a Jordan only store in Paris, Jordan Bastille, and in 2017 they sponsored the French Basketball Federation. Baby steps to create the fan base needed to stick with them to the move to football.

They were also smart in the way they realised the sponsorship deal. With the first insights of the logo (a merge of the PSG logo with the Jordans logo replacing the Eiffel Tower) were being worn by Justin Timberlake at his concert at AccorHotels Arena in Bercy, Paris.

But the full kit was not released until September 13th, when a group of journalist where lead through dimly lit hallways to the stadium, where basketball and football tricks were displayed before Kylian Mbappe, Dani Alves, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Shuang Wang appeared in the new kit.

The deal includes 90 products, including clothing for training, lifestyle, and performance. It has been reported that this is worth around €100 million for PSG. The clothing wasn’t on sale for long before the site went down, due to over demand!

This collaboration is going to popping up in more places than just the football pitch, making it one hell of a sponsorship deal.

Liverpool FC is getting technical with TigerWit

A slightly less trendy deal in comparison with PSG, but that didn’t stop Liverpool from beating them 3-2 on their match on Tuesday 8th Sept. Liverpool were also sporting their new sponsorship deal with the online blockchain company, TigetWit.

Billy Hogan, the Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer at Liverpool Fc, said “As our official Online Foreign Exchange Trading Partner, we are very excited to develop our partnership with TigerWit. Liverpool FC has a large number of fans across the globe, particularly in TigerWit’s core markets in the UK, Europe, and Asia. Through this new partnership with TigerWit, we look forward to marketing activations, which help bring our fans around the world even closer to the Club”

Liverpool has joined a growing list of currency trading sponsorships in the UK. With just a few weeks ago, we wrote a blog post on the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, sponsoring Newcastle United. Making a total of 8 Premier League clubs!

TigerWit has gained the collective image rights to the Liverpool players, matchday privileges at Anfield and, of course, brand exposure at the stadium and across their social media. They have already created an advertfeaturing Naby Keita, Alisson Becker, and Georginio Wijnaldum, which aired this week.